When you spend many weekends gardening -- new beds to dig, old ones to weed, plants to move, plants to add, grass to mow, etc -- sometimes you simply forget to look up every once in a while. Clearly, I need to clean out the gutters.

When you write scripts that are the controllers for processing data make sure to log when they start and finish the work. It is so frustrating to debug an erroneous processing result -- often days or weeks later -- and not have any indication when the process actually started and finished. A missing finished log entry is the first indication that the processing ended abruptly.

RI's Governor Carcieri has proposed that a photo-id be required to vote in RI. After all, (to paraphrase) "you need an id in order to fly". Perhaps we should also be expected to remove our shoes when voting too. It is hard to understand how our politicians continue to push for mechanisms to disenfranchise citizens.

I listened to some of How the States Got Their Shapes on the drive today. I was fascinated by the history of West Virginia -- a state that exists because of Civil War opportunism. How physical borders are negotiated is a great segue into how other kinds of borders are negotiated in families, sects, corporations, etc. Great source of projects for a high school, eg "Why is South Kingstown the shape it is?" or "Why does the Chariho school district exist?".

Henry is the goalkeeper for his soccer team. I was practicing with him the other day and trying to explain how to protect the goal by forcing the offensive player to have only one side of the goal to play the ball to and then only at a very acute angle. Henry is 8 and so none of this really sank in. Once again, I wished I had a pair of magic lens so that he and I could literally see the angles I was taking about overlaided on the playing field.

I was retelling this story to Geoffrey and I realized this was a small enough visualization project to perform my first canvas experiment. And here it is